These iconic words were the first we heard upon playing our characters all those years ago. We discovered Ascalon, the beauty of the world, and we all fell in love with the continent of Tyria.

The Maps from Guild Wars 1, connected to show where the continents lay.

However, Tyria is also the name of the planet. Assuming that the world of Guild Wars respects current astrophysics we can maybe place it’s origin through scientific means. Tyria does have a moon, it has a sun, and it most definitely belongs to a solar system in a galaxy… But this is Guild Wars, it must be more complicated than that?

Well it is.

We know that the world is a planet like any other, much like our own Earth. However, Tyria is connected to a multiverse, spanning across many worlds, realities, and dimensions through something called the Mists. Through the Mists we are able to travel to these worlds; the human gods used the Mists to shepherd humanity to Tyria. This proves the multiverse does contain other worlds, and consequently, making humans aliens to Tyria. Whether Tyria is the first world created for this multiverse is still unknown.

Tyria has 3 known continents: Tyria, Cantha and Elona. Cantha is cut off from the rest of the world through the Elder Dragons and their own seclusion, and Elona is currently under the rule of Palawa Joko. Nevertheless these continents still exist in present day.

There are also unnamed continents that can be found on a world map on the globe in the Chantry of Secrets. These continents are still a mystery to the world, as well as the races that may live on them.

The map of the world of Tyria, as seen on the globe in the Chantry of Secrets. This map has severe lore scrutiny as having missing elements and confusing sections.

Now to the most interesting bit of Tyria: it’s age. Known history can point to Tyria being more than 11,000 years old, dating back to 11,000 BE. We know this was when the True Giants roamed the world, as well as the elder races. But how far can we date Tyrias origin? For this let’s look at one of the elder races: the Jotun.

The Jotun were renown for their great lore keeping and extensive knowledge on stargazing and the world of Tyria. Through their stargazing, the Jotun found that the Elder Dragons have a connection to the stars. When the Elder Dragons were meant to awaken new constellations would form acting as a herald to the forthcoming destruction.

This is very interesting, showing that not only does Tyria and the Elder Dragons have a greater connection to the multiverse, but that for the Jotuns to understand and see this cycle, they would have to see the rise of the Elder Dragons more than once in history. This can give Tyria an age of more than 20,000 years ago as well as the Jotun, depending on when exactly the Elder Dragons awaken in their cycle.

Dragon constellation as seen by the Jotun.

This is purely speculations based on history, but it raises many questions: how old is Tyria? How old are the Elder Dragons? What role do these play in the grand multiverse? But more importantly what secrets does Tyria hold?